INNATE IMMUNITY

His research interests include the development of novel methodologies for the synthesis of organofluorine compounds and their applications for the preparation of bioactive fluorinated compounds or fluorinated biological probes. In 2016, he was awarded the Keith Fagnou Award from the Canadian Society for Chemistry.

Expertise in organic synthesis, catalysis, and medicinal chemistry. He has co-authored > 80 papers and received many prizes including the Keith Fagnou Award and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship.

Dr Alan Herbert is originally from New Zealand where he earned his MBChB and PhD form the University of Auckland. He initiated his research on Z-DNA at MIT. Following this, his genetics research led to the publication of the first genome-wide association study on a human population in the journal Science. Following a period at Merck translating human genetics into therapies, Dr Herbert founded the start-up InsideOutBio where he leads research to improve cancer therapy using approaches validated by human genetics.

In 2012, Jan moved to the University of Oxford, UK, to establish his independent research group. His laboratory is part of the MRC Human Immunology Unit and the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Jan's research dissects nucleic acid sensing by innate receptors in the context of virus infection, autoinflammatory disease and cancer.

His research is funded by MRC, Wellcome Trust, Lister Institute and European Union and dissects nucleic acid sensing by innate receptors in the context of virus infection, autoinflammatory disease and cancer.

Paul Brennan received his PhD in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley. Following post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, Paul spent eight years working in the pharmaceutical industry at Amgen and Pfizer. In 2011, Paul joined the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of Oxford. Over the course of his career, Paul has worked on most major drug classes of drug targets: kinases, GPCRs, ion-channels, metabolic enzymes, and epigenetic proteins.

Paul is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Chief Scientific Officer of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute in the Centre for Medicines Discovery at the University of Oxford. His research is focused on finding new treatments for dementia.